Dancing by Firelight
by Viidoll
Summary: Two years after the Makai tournament, Yusuke and Hiei are sent on a rare assignment by the Reikai. They are unexpectedly thrown into a plot more dangerous than they could have imagined - to both their lives and their relationship. Light Yusuke/Hiei & Kurama/Touya.
1. A New Task

_Disclaimer_: Unfortunately, I have yet to be given rights to Yu Yu Hakusho. It is unlikely that I ever will, considering the severity of my slash vision :p

So I haven't written anything in forever. Lately I've been feeling really nostalgic, so when we lost power for a good week thanks to Irene, this is what consumed my time (other than trips to family member's houses for hygienic purposes and Pokemon). Recently, I've been exploring the options of a relationship between characters other than HieixKurama and JinxTouya. I hope you enjoy this and I hope I've remained true to their characters.

This will probably be anywhere between 10-20 chapters of at least 2500 words each. At least, that's the plan :P And regardless of the title, there is no dance party. Sorry gaiz :(

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><p><strong>Dancing by Firelight<strong>  
><em>chapter one<em>

Koenma might have the appearance of a child, but he was certainly not naïve enough to know when something was amiss. He knew, when he received the missing in action report on one of his star employees, that something had gone wrong. He wasn't sure to what degree or why it had, but something was definitely off. It had been quite a while since there were any problems stemming from the Makai, but he had a feeling that it had just been the calm before the storm. His hired muscle, as it were, had their last mission over two years ago – it was only a matter of time before he would need them again.

But who could he send? Jin and Touya were busy rebuilding the shinobi ways and name, training disciples to uphold their traditions while still being able to exist in a modern and changing Makai. He was sure he could pull at least one of them from their duties, but he would only do so if it were absolutely necessary. Chuu and Rinku, while remaining loyal and devoted, were not entirely "mission material" when it came to something of the magnitude Koenma was expecting this to be. Suzuki and Shishiwakamaru were also dedicated, but Koenma found himself reluctant to call upon them because he knew they would always value themselves over any mission he gave them. He needed someone with a clear head but a passion for justice.

As for his prize four, well, they were mostly moving on with their lives as they very well should be. Kuwabara, of all people, managed to get accepted into a major college and maintain, with a great deal of fervor and hard work, some of the best grades in his school. There was absolutely no way Koenma could ask him to drop all of that to help him, not when the young adult was finally getting his life on track.

Kurama was always able to maintain a good balance between his human responsibilities and the life he held outside of being Minamino Shuichi. With his superior intellect, astounding ability to react accordingly, and his intense combat skills, Kurama was always the right man for the job – at least, under any other circumstances. Presently, his human mother has fallen gravely ill to some form of human disease. Kurama was spending every waking moment researching plants and herbs to find a way to cure her while also spending all the visiting hours he can to be with her as she deteriorates. Koenma knew exactly how much Kurama's human mother means to him and he was close enough with the kitsune to know how much pain this request would cause him. He could never ask him to leave his mother's side during something like this.

Koenma was also not foolish enough to ignore the fact that both Kuwabara and Kurama would feel torn between their current situations and dropping what they were doing, no matter how important, if it meant saving one or more of the worlds from a possible threat. No, he would not even tell them about it unless he absolutely had to. He could not allow them, as their friend rather than their boss, to put their lives on hold and miss out on their once in a lifetime chances or last human moments when he wasn't one hundred percent certain the circumstances should warrant it.

There were very few options left, but they were plenty available in comparison to the rest. Urameshi Yusuke, for instance, was a humble but happy owner of a ramen stand and an incomparable spirit detective. He had an already well established business and large, loyal clientele who would always return to him should he need to temporarily close shop. The man himself had stated on many occasions that he was always available to help.

Hiei, on the other hand, was bored out of his mind. Koenma knew that the portal site he was in charge of had seen little action over the past year, and there was nothing worse than the combination of boredom, bloodlust, and fire demon. Hiei had changed very little and was sure to finally be able to welcome a challenge, regardless of source, because of his instincts as a demon. Koenma could hardly blame him – standing guard at a gate with nothing to guard against was the equivalent of Koenma having to deal with a mountainous pile of mundane paperwork – a situation that was becoming all too frequent. Hiei would probably consider this mission as more of a "vacation" than anything else. He was sure Yusuke, with his personality, was likely to be antsy as well.

So Koenma had his initial investigation team. He summoned Botan and got started on the dull but necessary paperwork to begin such an investigation. He was confident they would not refuse. 

Botan had always been prone to appearing quite suddenly out of thin air. Yusuke had grown so comfortable with it that he was entirely unfazed when she appeared this time. In the two years past, she had not changed in the slightest. She was a spirit, after all. She wore her usual smile and still had her bright blue hair, wide pink eyes, and unchanging ferry girl uniform. She floated down from the night sky to land in front of his ramen stand. Luckily, she had enough common courtesy to appear after his regular customers – largely business men who were lonely and overworked – had gone and he was closing up for the evening.

Tonight he had an irregular customer as well. The man had just lost his wife of many years to an illness, and it had left Yusuke in a bad mood, as such things were prone to doing to him. Yusuke always found himself in life or death situations but they were always somehow within his control. He would never want to feel so helpless about something – never wanted to be put into that situation. Just thinking about it left a bad taste in his mouth, but the last thing he was going to do was take his emotions out on Botan. He put on a grin for her as she sat down at his booth and set out a bowl of extra ramen for her – there was more than enough to share with her and bring home the rest. "Hey Botan!" he said happily as he wiped down his side of the counter with a rag. "Been a while since I last saw you. How've you been?"

She smiled and broke apart her chopsticks. "I've been good! I've been a little busier than usual, but I've been well other than that." Yusuke frowned slightly at that. When Botan was busy, it usually meant a lot of human deaths were occurring. Perhaps there was some accident he hadn't heard of yet. He wouldn't ask her about it – they both would rather not talk about something like that. She glanced up at him from her bowl. "And you seem to be doing well. You had quite a lot of business tonight. I thought I'd have leave and find Hiei before I'd get the chance to talk to you – but then they started leaving."

He ignored that she mentioned the fire demon – he knew that explanation would come soon enough. Botan rarely showed up for a simple friendly visit, after all. "Yeah, I've got some of the late-working business types that stop here almost every night. You know the kind. They never seem to want to go home," he said with a laugh. "How's the kid doing?"

The ferry girl knew he was referring to Lord Koenma. She finished chewing before answering, "He's healthy, but incredibly busy. With the restructuring of Makai and its modernization, he's had a lot of paperwork to deal with. Proposals, law approvals – you know, the stuff he usually tries to avoid."

Yusuke smiled to himself as he washed the ramen bowls in his small sink. "So…" he said, "me and Hiei this time? Anyone else?"

"No," she said before taking another bite of ramen, "this is really good, by the way," she added before continuing. "You two are… the least busy of everyone."

Yusuke laughed at that. He knew very well how Koenma had chosen them. They were the ones just floating around, not really working hard toward any goals. And honestly, he would probably have chosen for the same reasons. He knew very well how hard Kuwabara was working and he knew how important this was to him. He would have been unable to ask him to break away from it as well. He also knew exactly what condition Kurama's human mother was in and he would never, under any circumstances, ask him to leave her side.

"If the situation should need it, we will send you backup," she continued. "Though if I were you, I wouldn't expect Kuwabara or Kurama on this mission."

"I don't," he said, wondering who was even available to help them out. "Hiei and I are tough. Don't worry about us – we won't need any backup."

She grinned as she swallowed the last of her ramen. "I wouldn't expect any less of you."

He smiled as he finished put the dishes on the drying rack. "So when do we leave?"

"Tomorrow morning, if possible," she said, taking the rag and rubbing down the other side of the counter for him as he washed her bowl. "The circumstances call for immediate action."

He frowned at that. He hoped the situation wasn't too serious. He was slightly out of practice with his sparring partners otherwise occupied. "All right. I'll make preparations then." He lowered the metal security curtain and locked it up.

"Thank you, Yusuke," she said with a smile as she summoned her oar. "You'll be prepped tomorrow morning."

"Okay, go tell the runt," he said with a smile which she returned before flying away. 

Hiei hadn't bothered changing into normal human clothes when he went to visit. Kurama was entirely unsurprised by this and found a little bit of amusement in the stares that the fire demon was getting as he walked down the pristine hallway of the hospital. He appreciated the feeling – he had been so stressed and exhausted that the visit was actually quite refreshing. It never ceased to amaze him how easily the two of them fell back into their normal banter. Even right now, Hiei was already in that mode. "You're being a fool," he was saying. Kurama couldn't help but smile. "You're no help to her if you can't even take of yourself. I wouldn't trust you with my life at this point."

"Thanks for worrying about me, Hiei," the kitsune said, prodding him in the side with his index finger. The fire demon swatted his hand away and sent a silent glare in his direction. Kurama knew what Hiei really meant with those insulting words – that the kitsune was stretching himself too thin and that he should rest in order to really help his mother.

And Hiei was aware that Kurama would never allow himself a break while his mother was dying. He scoffed at the man walking beside him, keeping his eyes in front of him. "I've told you before, but you are too soft."

The kitsune smiled at that. "I know someone else who is starting to get awfully pliable lately," he teased, smiling mischievously when his friend's gaze hardened slightly. "It's been pretty peaceful lately. Don't tell me you're becoming civil?"

"I'm not an animal, Shuichi," he said, hissing his friend's human name in the public area. It wasn't absolutely vital of him to do so – it was after visiting hours and the hallways were largely empty. Even if anyone overheard his true name, he didn't know them and it wouldn't have mattered. Hiei was just trying to remind him that he had assumed a human identity, therefore he was the most "soft" of the two. "Even someone like me," a demon, that is, "needs to have some degree of civility."

The kitsune smiled at this response. A few years ago, he would have been hard-pressed to have this kind of conversation with the fire demon. In the time he had known him, Hiei really had changed. He had embraced, ever so slightly, the side of him that wasn't all destruction and bloodshed. He had become someone less prone to acting violently on his anger and was able to somewhat maintain his composure. Maybe one day, though Kurama was sure it would be later rather than sooner, the demon would understand why Kurama chose a human life. The kitsune was too worn out to hold one more serious conversation for the day, however, and opted for more teasing instead. "Why Hiei," he sang, "you've grown up before my very eyes!"

The fire demon snorted in annoyance. "You make me wonder why I still even bother with you."

Kurama laughed and poked him again. "Who else could put up with you for more than five minutes?"

His friend ignored this and stepped through the motion-activated hospital doors. The sun had already set, and the wind was warm compared to the icy hospital. It was refreshing against their skin – and Kurama realized he hadn't actually stepped outside of the hospital in over two days. He had the texts he needed for research in both human and demon medicine in his mother's hospital room, and he had spent all of his time save for showering and eating, the latter being less frequent than the former, trying to find some way to cure her. She had a lowered immune system from her last bout with a devastating ailment, and she had contracted something even the doctors didn't recognize. All they could do was treat her for her symptoms and try to make her comfortable.

In those two days he had spent in her room, she hadn't stirred even once. He didn't have time to rest – who knew how long before she succumbed to her illness? Even Hiei realized how dire the situation was and had come to offer support, in his own unique way, to his trusted friend. Though it was unlikely he would admit to those reasons for visiting, Kurama appreciated it more than his friend would know. It was a dose of what they considered to be "normal" amidst the emotional and mental strain that had been dragging him down the past few weeks. He knew, however, that once his friend left the stress would be heavier on him than it had been prior to his visit.

But he had already been away from his mother for longer than he was comfortable with. They stood quietly in the night breeze, unsure of what exactly to say to each other. Hiei looked him in the eye – crimson glittering like blood rubies in the moonlight – and said, somewhat uncharacteristically, with no hint of sarcasm or insult in sight, "If anyone can find a cure, it's you."

"Thank you Hiei," the kitsune said with a solemn smile. "You don't know how much you've helped me tonight."

At that, his friend scoffed. "Like I said – soft."

_I'm not the only one_, the kitsune thought, but kept it to himself this time. He turned and walked through the glass doors, aware of his friend's gaze on his retreating back.

Hiei sensed her before he saw her. He sighed and shoved his hands in his pockets. She never had good timing.

"Botan," he said to her coldly in greeting as she landed on the sidewalk before him. He didn't want to have to deal with her chattering longer than was possible, though he noted it had been a while since they had last spoken, so he got straight to the point. "And what is my assignment this time?"

"You and Yusuke are going to the Makai," she said in response. "He has already agreed to leave tomorrow morning. Is this all right with you?"

He didn't even hesitate. As much as he would hate to admit it, his life had somehow become quite dull. The Makai was developing a government of sorts, and the opposition had been largely dealt with. With the support of the Reikai and consequently the Tantei, fewer demons were likely to violently disagree with the changes. He hadn't dealt with any insurgents in quite a while – he hadn't participated in anything other than a spar in a long time. Too long of a time. With the sour taste of his visit to the hospital still freshly lingering in his mouth, he nodded his head in agreement.

Botan nodded back, in acknowledgement and in farewell, before she mounted her oar and took to the sky once again. The fire demon scowled, as he always did, before walking at a human pace back to his station.

Well, his life would become somewhat interesting again soon enough.


	2. Through the Gate

_Disclaimer_: Still not mine. One day!

So here is chapter two of my lovely little YYH slash story :) I absolutely love Yu Yu Hakusho and I am saddened by the lack of fandom for it lately - and the lack of fiction that is not OC-themed. Not that all OC stories are bad, I just would rather read about the characters interacting amongst each other raher than a character I have yet to love. Its been an incredibly long time since I wrote any of these characters, and judging from my past writings, I was never quite able to write them down correctly xD So here's to hoping I was finally able to do so and they are all written well and in character.

I want to thank everyone for favoriting/alerting/reviewing the story so far. It's very encouraging to see that there is still a fanbase for this amazing series willing to give me their comments and constructive criticism. I hope you enjoy the latest chapter :)

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><p><strong>Dancing by Firelight<strong>  
><em>chapter two<em>

The train came to a halt at the station, jerking him abruptly out of his nap. Yusuke brought his hand to his mouth as he let a long yawn loose and stepped out of the car. He had spent more time than he had planned on getting everything in order for him to leave on his mission the night past. He smiled as he realized how differently he treated missions than he had only two years ago. Back then, he always just rushed in without a second thought – he never really worried about getting his business in order before running off to save the world. This time, he made preparations for Keiko to check in on his ramen stand while he was gone, and he had called everyone he felt should know where and what he was doing, at least to some extent.

He had spoken to Kurama over the phone last night as well. He didn't tell him that he was leaving, though he was sure the clever kitsune would find out far faster than Kuwabara. He just didn't want to leave without giving his friend one more wish for good luck. From what they discussed, his mother did not have a promising outlook. He sighed at the thought – he knew that Kurama was working harder than he ever had to find a cure for her, but she was suffering from an unknown illness of which there was no known cure. He also knew, however, that if anyone could find a way around it, it would undoubtedly be Kurama.

He could sense the fire demon's youki from where he was and began to follow it off the beaten path and into the woods. Yusuke shrugged to situate the straps rubbing against his shoulders. He had even packed a backpack with some necessities. He was sure he would hear about that from the snarky little fire demon he would be traveling with, but not everyone could make a fist full of fire at their whim to set up camp. And who knew if the two of them would be split up or not?

The morning air was crisp and cool against his skin as he yawned once more and made his way toward the gate they were to meet at that would lead them into the appropriate area of the Makai. He was honestly starting to feel excited about the trip, remembering the adrenaline rush previous endeavors had instilled in him. A grin spread across his face, a feeling that was oddly reminiscent of prior adventures, as stressful, tragic, and exciting as they might have been.

As happy as Yusuke was with his simple current life, he was and would always be a man of action. This was exactly what he needed and he was really looking forward to it. Even if it meant he had to deal with Hiei and his various attitude problems. It wasn't that he didn't like the fire demon – in fact, it was quite the opposite. How could he dislike someone he trusted with his life? There were just certain traits of his that Yusuke wasn't entirely fond of but was able to deal with.

Such as the glare he was receiving as he approached him. Hiei was never one to hold back his opinions on things he disapproved of, and the backpack must have fallen into that category. But it was strangely refreshing to see his friend's scowling face after so long, even if the first thing he saw was his displeasure. He wouldn't say it out loud, but he was glad to see him. And he had grown quite used to ignoring his friend's sour moods.

"Hiei!" He called out when he reached him and threw an arm around the smaller man's shoulders. If the fire demon's face could have held any more disapproval than it already did, it would have. He shrugged Yusuke's arm off and frowned, pointing to the backpack.

"The luxurious lives you humans must lead. Have you already forgotten how to survive without your human conveniences?" He said. Those were the first words Yusuke had heard from him in a couple of years, but he hadn't expected any warm welcomes on Hiei's part.

"Hello to you too," the spirit detective said, his grin still present. He decided to tease back, always an effective way of getting Hiei to change the subject. "I think I hear a little less venom in your voice. Don't tell me that working for the Reikai has made you soft?"

The fire demon snorted at this. "Speaking of soft, you're looking more flabby than usual. You must be very comfortable in your human life to let yourself go as you have."

Yusuke shrugged at this. He most certainly had not let himself go. He would go to Genkai's – as he still was unable to refer to it as anyone else's – temple regularly to train and keep himself in shape, just in case a situation such as this should ever occur. And partially because he would never live it down if he really did lose his muscle mass. "I see these past couple of years haven't blessed you with a growth spurt."

"Nor have they given you an attitude adjustment."

"I could say the same for you," Yusuke said back, but his smile was still present. He took the conversation for what it really was – hello, you haven't changed a bit, nice to see you after so long. This was probably the closest to such a conversation that the two of them would ever get and he was oddly all right with that.

"Now boys, do I need to separate you already?" Botan said as she floated into the cave.

Yusuke only smiled. He was somewhat surprised how easy it was to fall back into their routine. He could tell that Hiei's words held no real disdain and he knew his friend could tell the same about his. Generally when they were really arguing, there were more fists involved, after all.

"You know I hate to get straight to business," the ferry girl said as she landed on her feet in front of them, a manila folder in her arms. "But I'm afraid we must this time around."

Yusuke frowned at this – Hiei had already been frowning so there was no real visible change in his facial expression. "Why? What's going on?"

"We recently received some reports of strange noises and power readings in the Makai," Botan began, opening the folder and flipping through the few pages present within it. "Specifically in the Forest of Ages."

"I know of the Forest," Hiei said, and at Yusuke and Botan's prying gazes he sighed and elaborated. "It is an ancient, virtually untouched forest in a largely uninhabited area of the Makai. It is not protected by any power – it is just an unspoken rule that no one is allowed to enter. The forest has been there longer than anyone can remember, and its trees are said to be alive with spirits and as old as the Makai itself."

Botan nodded at this. "That is all our records show as well. I'm afraid that is all we know of the Forest because there has never been any pressing reason to further research it until now."

"So we're going to find the source of the power? Isn't that a little…" Yusuke hesitated to find the right words, "well, safe of a job to call us in?"

At his side, the fire demon nodded in agreement. "We might be detectives on file, but I'm pretty sure we're valued more for our strength than our investigative skills."

"Well, if you let me finish, you'd see why we called you," Botan said, shaking a finger at the two of them. "So eager to fight, aren't we? Men. Anyway, yes it was a 'safe' investigation. We sent in two other detectives employed by the Reikai to investigate the situation. Hours after entering the Forest, we lost all contact with them. We later found the body of one on the outskirts of the Forest, and the other is nowhere to be found."

"So we're on a rescue mission?" Yusuke asked, and Botan nodded.

"Officially, you are to find the missing detective and return him if he is alive," she said, though her expression read that this scenario was unlikely. Yusuke wondered what state the other body was in for her face to look like it did.

"And if he is dead?" Hiei asked, getting straight to the point as always.

"You are to find out how and why he died, as well as locate the strange power source," she said.

"You don't know how he died?" Yusuke asked incredulously. Usually death in the Makai was pretty obvious. Which meant it may not have been death by demon at all. He and Hiei exchanged looks – this could potentially be a little bit different than what they were used to.

Botan merely shook her head. She closed the file and tucked it under her arm, summoning her oar into her hand from thin air. "The moment you enter from here, you will be on the edge of the Forest. We have no methods of contacting you once you enter – the power is too raw and blocks out any signals from being transmitted. And I don't need to tell you boys that this forest is ancient and should not be harmed?"

Yusuke rolled his eyes. If he was getting in a fight there, the last thing he was going to worry about was whether or not his rei gun missed and hit a tree. He knew that Hiei cared even less about the situation.

She sat on her oar and floated in the air before them. This time, the look on her face was one of worry. Yusuke had grown used to seeing her concern for his life and the lives of his friends, but this one was different in a way. "This isn't part of your official order, but… your lives are the most important thing. If anything happens to really jeopardize your lives, leave immediately. You are both too valuable to lose in there."

The fire demon snorted in response to her words. "Too valuable because of our strength, of course."

She smiled sadly, but she knew by now not to take his comments to heart. "Too valuable as friends."

"I got it, Botan," Yusuke said, trying to find the right words to ease her mind. "We know when to come running back."

"I really hope you do," she said, but turned on her biggest smile in order to encourage them, though it was rather easy to see through. "Come back soon, we should all have an official reunion when you two get back!"

Hiei snorted again, and began to say, "As if I'd –"

Yusuke stepped in front of him and cut him off, wearing his very largest grin and holding a thumbs up. "Of course we will. I might even bring the ramen!"

"You better!" She said with a smile, and with that she flew off into the sky and was soon out of sight. Yusuke made sure to wear his smile for as long as it took until she could no longer see them before he dropped it in favor of a more serious expression and turned around to face the gate. He rolled his eyes and smiled a little when he saw that Hiei had already disappeared through without him. Some people just really do not change. Somehow, the thought was a little comforting to him. With that small smile still on his face, he stepped through the barrier.

The crimson skies of the Makai had once seemed menacing to him, a sign of the evil that occurred there on a daily basis. But Yusuke, of all people, knew what this world was really like. In a way, it was far more innocent than the world he had just left. It was raw and untamed, and it felt like a home away from home to him – though he had a feeling that might have been the demon blood inside of him.

He breathed in the fresh, unmarred air of the world he had just set foot in and turned his gaze upon the edge of the forest before them. "Whoa!" he exclaimed, his normal grin on his face once more. "When you said as old as the Makai, I thought you were exaggerating!" The trees – what were probably the thinner ones since they were on the outskirts of the forest, were thicker than he could have imagined. They were likely wider than six of him wrapped around from head to foot. They stood more than a hundred feet tall – and beyond them were trees in the distance that stood even taller. "Forests like this just don't exist in the Ningenkai."

Hiei scoffed beside him before stepping forward. "Of course they couldn't – humans are very good at killing their home, after all."

Yusuke held up his hands in mock surrender and laughed. "Hey, the half of me that's human is very offended."

The fire demon merely shook his head and ignored his companion, removing the bandana from around his forehead and opening his third eye. He closed his other two and held his breath, searching ahead.

"See anything?" The spirit detective asked, nudging a small pebble with his foot. Already, he was anxious to be on the move – to go on another adventure. Often times, he would rethink these feelings further along down the journey, but there was no way he could control them. Because no matter what happened, no matter what was lost or what was discovered, they never walked away empty-handed. Even if all they left with only a tighter bond, that was worth fighting for.

He couldn't guess how Hiei felt about that, but he was sure they didn't have the same line of thinking when it came to that. He looked at his silent friend, the third eye flitting about in search of anything that could help them. Hiei looked absolutely calm, no signs of anxiety or haste in him. The Jagan closed before his red eyes opened, and he looked at Yusuke. "I can't see anything. The Forest is so shrouded in ancient power that it obstructs even my view. There is no way any device, whether its origin be Makai, Reikai, or Ningenkai, could send or receive signals here."

"Is there anything at all, even blurry or whatever?" The spirit detective asked again, looking for any part of an answer before they stepped in.

The fire demon scowled and shook his head. "Just that it is a dark, deep forest. And one thing that I can't be sure of."

"What is it?" Yusuke asked, surprised that Hiei even felt it worth mentioning if he was unsure.

"A strange smell," the fire demon said, and Yusuke would have laughed and made some kind of remark about demons and their noses had Hiei not looked so serious about it. "I can't tell what it is because it is too faint, but it is coming through the trees."

Yusuke shrugged, adjusting his backpack. "Whatever it is, we'll find out eventually."

The fire demon nodded, his gaze fixed on the trees. He stepped forward, and Yusuke followed closely behind him. Hiei's steps became quicker the deeper in they went, faster and faster until they were at a sprint. Yusuke couldn't see – or in this case smell – what was bothering him, but he knew when to just trust his friend and follow. Especially since Hiei was deliberately moving slow enough for Yusuke to keep up – as the fire demon possessed an incredible speed that Yusuke would likely never be able to match.

"What's wrong? What are we chasing?" Yusuke shouted after what felt like ages of running in silence.

"You can't feel it?" His companion remarked, though all signs of hostility in his voice were replaced with pure concentration. When Hiei devoted himself to something, he did so entirely. "You can't feel it lingering in the air?"

Maybe Yusuke was less practiced than he had thought, because it took him a moment of concentration before he felt was his friend was referring to. And then he too, was beginning to smell what Hiei had already.

The air felt heavy, the aura felt wrong somehow. It was a complete change from the freeness of the world outside the forest's edge, and the spirit detective was surprised that he hadn't noticed the transition until now.

"It's death," the fire demon said. "I can almost taste it in my breath."

"It's wrong," Yusuke said, and the scent began to grow stronger and stronger as they continued deeper into the trees. The spirit detective knew by now what it was they were smelling, but he refused to say it out loud until he could confirm it with his own eyes.

And suddenly, they broke through into a small clearing, and the smell was overwhelming. Yusuke brought his hands to his nose in an effort to block the smell, and even Hiei crinkled his nose on sight.

"That would explain the smell," the fire demon said.

There was maybe thirty, forty of them all in one pile, not even concealed from view. There they all lie, littered amongst the ground like pebbles in the dirt. The rotting corpses of humans.


	3. Whispers in the Trees

_Disclaimer_: Unfortunately, Togashi Yoshihiro has yet to relinquish the rights to Yu Yu Hakusho to yours truly. One of these days, I'll convince him.

I know it took a while, and I'm sorry :( The fourth chapter is already in progress, so hopefully it will be finished a lot sooner than this one was. In the mean time, I've been getting some private messages concerning the pace of the story and it's lack of slash content at this point. I'll say it here so everyone is clear - this is not just a slash story. This is an action/mystery story with slash involved in it. I'm trying to approach their relationship realistically - and real relationships take time. I'm not just going to have them confess their love and throw themselves into each other's arms and have wild intercourse on the forest floor. There are plenty of other well-written fics like that on this site. This one is different :)

Thanks again to those who read, review, favorite, etc! You are what keeps me motivated and inspired to write this. Thank you so much, and I hope you enjoy this latest chapter in what has become one of my precious fanfiction babies~

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><p><strong>Dancing by Firelight<strong>  
><em>chapter three<br>_

Yusuke was no stranger to seeing corpses. Though he tried to go through his spirit detective years preventing them, he had still ended up seeing more than his fair share – demon and human alike. It was kind of an occupational hazard. But the sight of this – so many neglected and maimed bodies was enough to make him feel queasy. He would like to blame that feeling on his recent lack of experience in dealing with them, but it was just that it was all so... wrong. Like they were just trash, strewn about across the clearing in piles. He had never seen anything like it before, and there was very little he had not seen.

Hand covering his nose and mouth, he glanced over at Hiei. How the fire demon could act like sights such as these were an everyday occurrence, Yusuke would probably never know.

"I don't see a single demon amongst them," Hiei stated in a matter-of-fact manner, seemingly ignoring his partner's clear disgust. "The sheer number is strange. This would have to account for nearly all of the recent human disappearances."

Straightening himself up and trying unsuccessfully to block out the stench, Yusuke inquired, "How recently is 'recent?'"

Red eyes fell upon him for a moment, though the spirit detective could not read anything in them, before they looked back almost thoughtfully toward the corpses. "At least the past year. The Spirit World had estimated that the number of human disappearances should have drastically reduced since your... change to the Makai, but the numbers stayed more or less the same. Now we know why."

"No, not yet," Yusuke said, shaking his head as if it would shake the nausea from his stomach. "I can picture demons taking humans for food, but these people seem to be..." he paused, searching for the right word that wouldn't bring back that feeling in his stomach. "...untouched by anything. Well..." As much as he really didn't want to, the word detective was a part of his job title, so he turned back to the bodies and stepped closer to them to observe.

"Other than by scavengers," Hiei agreed by completing the sentence.

"How many do you think there are?" Yusuke asked. He vaguely wondered if even just two years away from his usual line of work could have made him this sensitive to suddenly being involved in it again. In all of his time as a spirit detective, his usual response had been rage, not nausea. But he was starting to feel a little lightheaded, and he could feel a cool sweat forming on his brow.

When he received no response, he looked back over to the fire demon next to him, who seemed to be studying Yusuke with inquisitive eyes. He blinked, trying to get himself back under control. "What? What are you staring at?"

The fire demon was silent for a minute, that strange look still on his face, before he turned. "Judging from the look on your face, I honestly don't think you want to know the answer to that question."

"Tch," Yusuke said in annoyance. He was hoping Hiei wouldn't notice what was going on with him, but the fire demon was incredibly perceptive when it came to matters such as these. As he was thinking that, Hiei disappeared from his sight, quite suddenly as he usually does, in a flash of black and a whoosh of air.

Yusuke watched as he reappeared closer to the piles, flitting back and forth between them. The spirit detective was just glad that Hiei had taken the initiative before he decided to. When the fire demon reappeared with a hissing sound by his side, he asked, "So, did you see him in there?" in reference to the missing spirit detective that had visited this fine scenery before them.

Hiei shook his head. "No. I didn't see anything other than humans. Not even a single demon." His brow was furrowed, but whatever was on his mind was not something he seemed willing to offer out loud just yet. Yusuke turned back to the corpses and approached them as well, sucking in a deep breath and holding it before he did. Something was off about them, something he couldn't quite place his finger on... They all appeared to have been thrown haphazardly, as if they were the dolls of a child who had quickly moved on. They were all fully clothed, and all of their eyes were closed, as if they died in their sleep.

He inhaled unconsciously when he realized, and immediately regretted doing so. Placing his arm in front of his face in a vain attempt to shield the stench from overwhelming his senses, he looked over his shoulder at Hiei, who was simply staring at him. "They are no wounds," Yusuke said, pointing somewhat unnecessarily at the pile of bodies before him. "There is no blood. Not a single one of them was injured in any way."

"...yes," the fire demon agreed, his brow still furrowed. "So why are they all dead? How did they die?"

"If you want to get any closer to see if you can find out, be my guest," Yusuke said, stepping back.

Hiei scoffed, but made no attempt to move closer. "I doubt we would find anything regardless of whether we looked or not. We are not doctors – we can't perform autopsies. I suggest we move on."

"Shouldn't we report this to Reikai?" The spirit detective asked his partner, but Hiei shook his head.

"This isn't part of our mission. We are supposed to find a missing detective, aren't we? We will report it once we find him – or any evidence of his whereabouts." At this, the fire demon returned to the outskirts of the forest, his hands shoved in the pockets of his jacket as he walked deliberately slowly.

He was right, of course. Not that Yusuke was going to say that thought out loud. As disturbing and repulsive as this sight was, it was not what they were there for. He took off after Hiei at the pace of a jog, glad that he was leaving that nightmare behind. They would have to deal with it later, of course, but he would honestly prefer it that way.

When he caught up to his companion, Hiei's bandana was removed once again, his third eye glancing around while his original two remained closed. His brow furrowed in annoyance, and crimson eyes opened as he retied the cloth across his forehead.

"Still can't see anything?" Yusuke asked, breathing generously now that the air was more or less cleared of that horrible smell. He knew, as much as he wouldn't want to, that he would never forget it.

"...no," he answered briefly, his annoyance now transferring into his voice as he continued walking forward. They were traveling at a slower pace now that they had no real goal in mind aside from going deeper into the forest. Even as the smell of decay completely faded into the distance, there were still something eerie and off-putting about their surroundings.

It was just trees, albeit abnormally large ones, in every direction. Trees, shrub, brush, and the occasional white, sweet smelling flower here and there. Yusuke even leaned in once or twice to inhale the sweet scent, clearing his sinuses of any lingering smell of rotting. By now the forest's canopy had completely blocked out any sight of the sky above them, giving Yusuke the feeling of being in another world. And the silence – that was the worst part. He couldn't hear anything beyond the rustle of leaves and creaking of branches.

He stopped walking. "Wait a minute."

Hiei paused in his stride, turning back to look at the halfbreed with an inquisitive and slightly annoyed stare. "What is it?"

"The animals," he said, straining his ears. "Where are all of the animals? I don't hear any of them. Not even birds."

The widening of the fire demon's eyes was fractional and subtle at best, but Yusuke managed to catch it. Hiei was silent as well for a moment, listening. But there was not even a single sound, not one chirp of a bird or bark of a fox in the entire area around them.

"There are no signs of life at all," Yusuke said after a while. "There's nothing living here except for the plants."

"...this forest is nothing but death," Hiei said quietly.

All of a sudden, the silence exploded into overwhelming noise. Thousands of whispers, harsh and hissing voices, erupted around them. There were hundreds of voices, all crackling, whispering all at once so that they seemed as though they were shouting.

Yusuke instinctively readied his index finger in the familiar imitation of a gun, his eyes darting around to find the source of the sound. He looked at Hiei, who had already unsheathed his sword and held it before himself, flashes of crimson flitting around in search of the voices.

"All right, this is freaking me the hell out!" Yusuke shouted as a harsh wind picked up around them, loosening strands of his hair in the process.

"They're saying something," Hiei spoke up over the roar of the wind and the chorus of murderous whispers.

Yusuke strained his ears. It was to tell if they were speaking any kind of familiar words at all, because they were not whispering in unison. But he could soon begin to tell that they were all saying the same thing. One phrase over and over.

"Nothing but death, nothing but death," the voices repeated in the worst, and creepiest, imitation of Hiei he had ever heard. That's all they were saying – a mimicry of what the fire demon had last said.

"Where the hell is it coming from!?" The spirit detective shouted, tired of waiting around for his enemies to show themselves. Hiei started to shout something back, but his voice was drowned out as the voices got louder and louder.

"Nothing but death, death. You will die in this forest of death!" The voices hissed, and suddenly Yusuke was thrown off of his feet, his backpack hitting the hard ground beneath him. And then he saw them all, high above in the branches of the trees. Hundreds of ashen grey and diluted brown creatures, loosely shaped like humans and with skin the texture of bark. They appeared to be growing small branches themselves, their heads sporting the thickest and longest of them, as if they were hair. They had no eyes or nose, just mouths. Far too large mouths that sported long, pointed teeth. Those mouths looked at him and grinned.

"Hiei, in the trees!" Yusuke screamed out as all of the creatures threw themselves toward the earth like a monstrous torrential downpour. He swiftly rolled out of the way, getting to his feet as they landed before him. He readied his fists in front of him, his eyes set in a glare. Behind him, he could hear the sound of Hiei's blade slashing through what sounded like wooden bodies.

They were somewhat larger than him, even though they stood in a hunched position, one hand on the ground and the other out before them like claws – their excess of finger-like appendages certainly resembling them. If those claws managed to stab him, they would easily go all the way through him.

Those oversized mouths hissed through enormous teeth, and then they lunged. The first creature shattered into thousands of splinters beneath his fist, and he whirled around to catch another right across the chest with the back of his arm. He fired a barrage of spirit energy into the mass of figures with his shotgun attack, creating a clearing that was quickly filled.

"What the hell do these things want!?" He shouted in anger, taking down his enemies as quickly as possible with fists and spirit energy.

"Obviously they want to kill us," was Hiei's sarcastic response as he sped by in a flash, disappearing back into the fray with his word in hand.

One creature slashed at him with it's enormous claws, and Yusuke managed to pull away in time for the ensuing wound to be shallow cuts rather than a missing arm. He fired another spirit shotgun at the creatures, their shattered bodies crunching beneath his feet like twigs as he moved.

In unison, the creatures all jumped back and scurried up the trees faster than they should have been able to. Hiei stepped forward at his side, staring up into the trees with a glare. Though his cloak was moderately torn in a few places, the only injury he sported was a single superficial cut on his left cheek.

"I supposed they realized they were no match," the fire demon said, his sword still in hand at rest at his side. "Pitiful creatures. No army of twigs can hope to kill a demon of my caliber."

"It is you who are pitiful," the creatures hissed, baring their teeth – rows upon rows of fangs that flashed when they moved. "Pitiful demon, pitiful halfbreed. You will die in this forest. All who enter die. There is no turning back. There is no going home. There is nothing but death." They hissed, repeating what seemed to be their favorite line, provided without charge by the fire demon.

"Don't be naïve," Hiei said, his eyes still set in their usual glare as they stared up at the tree tops. "You are too weak to even wound us. You will never be able to kill us."

The creature's enormous mouths only widened in smiles, and they began to make a sound that Yusuke thought might have been laughter – a low, hissing, wheezing sort of sound. They started to disperse into the surrounding trees.

"We don't have to kill you," the voices whispered together. "The forest will."

And with that, the last of them disappeared into the canopy.

The silence fell over them once again, as if nothing had even happened. The forest was completely devoid of any signs of life once again, and Yusuke almost missed their new-found toothy friends. Though that honestly might be because it had been exciting – he had missed the combat of his old lifestyle. He had missed the rush of adrenaline coursing through his veins.

After a moment of silence, Yusuke stretched his arms into the air and yawned. "Well, that was interesting. Any idea what the hell those things were?"

Hiei merely shrugged, sheathing his sword at his side. "I'm not sure. Kurama would probably know, this seems to be his area of expertise. All I know is that these creatures are not responsible for the bodies we found before."

"That's true," Yusuke said, throwing his arms behind his head. "There weren't any claw marks or enormous bite wounds on any of them." He prodded the pieces of wood strewn across the ground under their feet with the tip of his toe – in pieces, they looked like nothing but branches, twigs, and pieces of bark. From what Yusuke could see, there wasn't a single tooth littered amongst them which was rather odd considering how many they had destroyed in their little battle. There should have been some teeth amongst the splintered remains. But like Hiei said, this was probably closer to Kurama's area of knowledge than his, so he let it go for the time being.

Hiei had already begun to move on again, though this time he seemed more inclined to glance above them every once in a while, likely in case their wooden friends brought back more powerful reinforcements. The forest was beginning to get darker and darker – the trees seemed to be thicker and closer together now, and the brush was a tangled mess of twigs and leaves.

Yusuke was starting to get tired at this point. It was odd though, he hadn't thought he was this out of shape before this mission. He was always training in his spare time, after all. But the feeling of nausea from the sight of the corpses hadn't completely subsided, and he was beginning to form a bit of a headache. The sweet scent of the large white flowers seemed to be drawing him into thoughts of napping, but he shook them from his mind.

"I can't even tell if it's dark because it's night time or if the trees are just blocking out all of the sunlight," Yusuke said, just for the sake of starting a conversation and keeping his mind off of how disappointed he was in himself for letting his body get into this shape.

But Hiei kept walking ahead of him in absolute silence. Yusuke stopped to observe another of the white flowers – they seemed to be getting more frequent on their path the further into the forest they went. He crouched down and sniffed in the sweet scent once more. "Maybe we should bring some of these back for Kurama," he thought out loud, grabbing the flower by the stem.

"Don't touch anything," Hiei said, turning to look at his companion who had clearly begun to annoy him. Though honestly, what didn't annoy the fire demon?

"It's just a flower," the spirit detective said, cutting into the stem slightly with his fingernail, ready to pluck it.

"We don't know what anything is here, or what can happen," Hiei said, walking over swiftly to Yusuke's side. But when the spirit detective turned to look at his approaching companion, he felt the flower break off into his hand.

"Oops," he said, grinning sheepishly at Hiei. But his hand started to feel wet and warm, and when he looked down at it, he inhaled at the sight.

Pouring out of the severed stem and covering his hand was the familiar image of fresh blood.


	4. Deeper into the Forest

_Disclaimer_: Why will I never own Yu Yu Hakusho!? Why Togashi, whyyyyyy!?

And here is chapter number four :) This one took a little bit longer than I had expected it to - the past few months have been incredibly busy for me. Work, college, midterms already! And a wedding to top it all off. It's okay, I got completely and utterly and amazingly wasted at the wedding and had the time of my life :) It was the one day I really relaxed xD But anyway, yes. This chapter is (finally) going to show you a little bit about what the hell is going on in this story, and the Yusuke/Hiei stuff that everyone is dying for is definitely going to happen soon! Thank you for your patience, I've just been trying to approach it realistically. And thank you for remembering that this isn't just based around the two of them finding love or something like that. There is an entire other plot :)

Thank you as always to everyone who reads, reviews, favorites, etcetera etcetera! Nothing makes me happier and more motivated to write than seeing a review alert sitting in my inbox. I'm glad everyone likes the story so far and I hope that this chapter lives up to your expectations! :) Enjoy reading, and let me know what you think! :)

* * *

><p><strong>Dancing by Firelight<strong>  
><em>chapter four<br>_

Yusuke glanced back and forth between the fire demon and his own blood-covered palm. Maybe he should have listened when Hiei told him not to touch the flower. But that was a thought he would keep to himself, and instead he just stood up and groaned.

"What the hell is wrong with this place!?" he shouted at no one in particular, holding the flower precariously between his fingers so the blood dripped onto the grass rather than his hand. "I don't get it! Piles of dead people, talking trees with giant teeth, and bleeding flowers. The hell!?"

Hiei wordlessly removed his sword from his sheath and slammed it directly into the bark of the tree next to him. Yusuke glared at him. "I thought we weren't supposed to touch anything," he said, mocking his companion in his annoyance.

"That was before you made the flower bleed," Hiei said, and pulled his blade free from the tree he had embedded it in. The substance that began to ooze out of it, lacing between the indents of the tree's bark, was crimson red.

"Well now you made the tree bleed," Yusuke said in retort, wiping his blood-covered hand on the large leaves of a nearby bush. "Looks like we're both guilty now."

Hiei just scoffed and shook his head, turning on his heel and continuing down their impromptu path. Yusuke scowled – this forest was just plain freaky – and followed behind him, clutching the flower in his hand now that it had stopped bleeding. He might as well keep it around and give it to Kurama. He had already plucked it after all. And it's not like he could bring him a whole bleeding tree.

They entered a small, dark clearing and Hiei stopped walking without a word. In a flash, he was gone, though judging by the sounds around him and the leaves falling to the ground, he had disappeared up a nearby tree. Yusuke glanced around while Hiei surveyed the canopy. The trees were so large this deep in the forest that their roots towered above his head. They did, however, provide what looked to be a comfortable sleeping area with some cover that would be relatively easy to guard. Not that they were hiding.

By the time Hiei came back from his trip into the tree tops, Yusuke had already gathered several dry branches, though they might be the "twigs" of this area, and placed them in the center of the clearing. He imagined what would happen if he asked the proud and mighty Hiei to light a fire for him. The fire demon would scoff, possibly hit him, definitely insult him, and tell him that his powers were to be used for more important purposes than lighting a campfire.

Luckily, Yusuke had thought of this scenario ahead of time, and pulled a book of matches from the front pocket of his backpack. When he successfully lit the fire, he reached into his backpack again. Hiei was silent, perched atop a nearby tree root, leaning his back against the enormous tree trunk.

The spirit detective pulled a small pot and a bag of dried noodles out of his backpack, and Hiei scoffed. "Are you serious?" He asked in both incredulity and disdain.

"What?" Yusuke asked with a grin, pulling a couple of bottles of water from the pack and tossing one to his companion.

"Are you seriously going to make ramen? Here?" The fire demon asked, as if bringing ramen noodles to the Demon World was some act of horrible defiance, like he was breaking some very important law.

"It's ramen. It's my specialty. I can't not have ramen for dinner. If I didn't eat my own ramen, I'd never get any customers!" Yusuke said with a laugh, not taking his own side of the argument, if it could even be called that, too seriously.

"You really have become soft," The fire demon scoffed, putting his arms behind his head and closing his eyes, leaning against the tree. "The next time I see you after this, you'll be overweight and wearing slippers. Humans."

"And the next time I see you, you'll probably have _another_ extra eye," Yusuke said with a smile as the water in the pot came to a boil. "Demons."

Hiei had opened one eye to look at him at those words, but simply snorted in his annoyance and closed it again. Yusuke placed the dried out bundle of noodles, enough for two people with rather large appetites, into the bubbling pot and began to stir it with the disposable kind of chopsticks he had also had the foresight to bring along with him. He must have been hanging out a lot with Keiko – he never used to go into situations like these quite as prepared as this. With all those lectures she would give him, maybe one or two of them had finally gotten through his head. Or maybe he had gotten smarter in the past two years. Or he was just going soft, used to his modern human conveniences, as Hiei had said. Whatever it was, he was just glad he did choose to come prepared this time around. Since Kurama wasn't here to do so, he had to.

The fire demon had been silent the entire time Yusuke had spent preparing the food. The smell of the freshly made ramen helped the spirit detective to forget about his headache that seemed to be growing in intensity. At least, he could temporarily ignore it. The only thing he had on his mind at this point was food.

"Hiei," he said over his shoulder. The fire demon opened his crimson eyes with a look of pure indifference set in his visage. Yusuke grinned at him and waved his hand, motioning him over to the fireside. The demon in question seemed to sneer a little, but he hopped off of the tree root and joined his companion in the clearing.

"Come to think of it, this is the first time you've had my famous ramen, isn't it?" Yusuke asked, stirring the contents of the pot that was close to overflowing. He scooped out a large portion of the meal into one of the smaller bowls he had brought along and handed it over to his friend.

Hiei only made a noise in response. He sat down on the ground in a cross-legged fashion and took the steaming bowl into both of his hands. He broke apart the disposable chopsticks Yusuke had also packed and stirred the contents of his bowl thoughtfully. The human could only laugh at his companion's scrutiny of the ramen. "It's good, I promise. Didn't you hear me say famous?"

"I may trust you to win a fight, Yusuke. I don't know if I trust you to cook," Hiei said, his brow furrowed. But he picked some of the warm noodles up in his chopsticks and took a bite. His face was completely unreadable, but he continued to eat the meal. Yusuke took that as a good sign and began to eat his own serving.

After a moment of the silence of the forest and the slurping of his noodles, Yusuke pointed to Hiei with his chopsticks and spoke through a full mouth. "So... you're not working for Mukuro anymore?"

Crimson flashed up at his through glaring eyes. "What business is it of yours?"

Yusuke shrugged, completely used to conversing over a gaze of hatred. "I just thought you were going to work by her side."

Hiei took another bite of the ramen and chewed it completely during a long and silent moment before looking back to Yusuke. "It seems I'm better off alone." That was definitely something that the spirit detective could see as a reason for Hiei to leave, though he had a feeling that the fire demon, as usual, wasn't going to elaborate on the details. The look that Hiei shot him, the one that read "stop asking if you want to live," was enough to keep him quiet about the subject for now.

"Well..." Yusuke searched around for a subject. He waved his chopsticks around expressively as he inquired, "Have you seen Kurama lately?"

"I have," Hiei answered, taking another bite of his meal. He kept his gaze off of Yusuke.

"And? How's the situation?" He asked, genuinely curious. When he spoke with him on the phone, he never really got a good picture of what was going on. The fox was rather guarded about the subject, as if keeping the details quiet would lessen the impact of his mother's illness. And the spirit detective knew that his friend was likely to keep things out or tone them down to keep Yusuke from worrying. Hiei, on the other hand, would not.

The fire demon sighed, though it seemed to be more out of annoyance at the questions rather than feelings on their friend's situation. "It isn't looking good. He's doing everything he can to try to find a cure, short of stealing some kind of magic artifact."

Yusuke groaned. He certainly hoped something like that wouldn't happen again. But he knew exactly what lengths his friend would go to in order to save his mother. And honestly, he couldn't blame him if that was something he needed to do. He just hoped that it wouldn't get to that point – Kurama had been willing to die to save his mother when he had first met him years ago. The spirit detective made a mental note that he should check up on them in person once they returned from this mission.

Hiei set his empty bowl down on the ground and made his way back to lean comfortably on the tree root once more. Yusuke sighed, his headache back with full force, before he cleaned up the mess and set himself up for the night.

Several days passed with a total lack of inactivity. They wasted a lot of time attempting to find routes through the forest – the further in they went, the more inaccessible the area was. The trees were thick and close together, several times blocking their paths. Those strange creatures would sometimes taunt them from the treetops, but none of them made an attempt to fight them again. The spirit detective was sure they wouldn't again, considering how well it turned out for them last time.

And Yusuke found himself developing a cough of sorts, likely from some kind of cold. He wasn't the type to let a simple cold drag him down, though the headache that came with it was slowly becoming more and more painful. But colds only lasted for a short amount of time, and he had already been afflicted for the entirety of the time they had been there. By now, it should start to get better.

Still, a cold would explain why he was feeling so sluggish and weaker than he normally did. Hiei just rolled his eyes when Yusuke would cough, as if human ailments were completely beyond his range of tolerance.

That morning was a particularly difficult one for the spirit detective to wake from. The constant darkness of the forest around them certainly didn't help him to awaken any faster – he had completely lost touch with his own internal sense of time and he couldn't tell the days and the nights apart. Hiei would occasionally disappear into the canopy, and would make their plans based on what the sky looked like once he broke through the barricade of leaves and branches. This loss of time and his ailment both weighed down on him and exhausted him.

He remembered all the other times they had been sent on missions. They had never gone quite like this – the constant waiting and exploring. They were always full of action and violence. And he preferred them to this.

He had taken longer than he would have liked to roll out of his makeshift bed of leaves, clean himself up, and to gather all of their things. Hiei watched him as he did so with his eyebrows raised.

"What?" Yusuke asked, stifling a cough. "Demons don't get colds?"

"Not usually," the fire demon answered, crossing his arms over his chest. He was leaning against an enormous tree trunk, and was doing absolutely nothing to help Yusuke, naturally. "We live a more exposed life. A mere cold doesn't affect a demon the way it seems to be affecting you."

"Yeah, yeah. Humans live a sheltered life. We live in luxury. Our lives are perfect and comfortable," Yusuke retorted, allowing his cold to let his annoyance appear. There was only so many times he could take those comments in good humor, and today did not seem to be one of them.

Hiei said nothing in response to his companion's sarcastic comment, just silently pushing himself from his position against the tree. After a pause, he said, "I am finally starting to feel that strange power. It is becoming much stronger than when we first arrived."

At this point, Yusuke really could care less. He just wanted to find whatever it was, beat up whoever needed a beating, and go home to find some nice cold medicine and a pain killer for what had now become a migraine. "Whatever. Let's just find it and get this all over with."

At that moment, the increasingly familiar sound of hushed and eerie laughter resounded around them once more. Yusuke scowled – he was really getting tired of these things. Both the human and the fire demon glanced up into the trees and found the ashen, twisted bodies of the forest creatures once again. Honestly, what could possibly be so funny that they laughed at them every other day?

The spirit detective allowed his frustration to get the better of him. "Do you assholes ever shut up!? Don't you have anyone else to laugh at!?" He brought a hand to his mouth and coughed rather violently after raising his voice at them.

"Yusuke," Hiei said sternly, but the creatures' laughter became louder at the comments.

"We laugh at you," They whispered harshly, in unison. "We love watching you die."

"I don't know what the hell you're talking about!" Yusuke shouted up at them. Another coughing fir took over before he finished. "You've obviously never seen a cold – humans get them. Then they get over them." The edges of his vision started to blur, probably out of his growing anger with these annoying monsters.

"Yusuke," Hiei repeated. Something in his voice had changed, but the spirit detective ignored him.

"Just leave us alone, okay!?" Yusuke shouted up at them. "Or I'll have to go up there and remind you why you won't come near us!"

The forest erupted with their hissing laughter, which was doing absolutely nothing to help the pain from his migraine. "Yusuke," Hiei said once more, and the spirit detective finally looked over to his friend. He brought his hand to his mouth to stifle another coughing fit.

"What!?" He snapped at the fire demon, who simply wore an unreadable expression and took a few steps toward him.

"Your hand," Hiei said, motioning his own hand in the spirit detective's direction. Yusuke looked at him in confusion, but glanced down at his hands. His eyes widened when he finally saw what the fire demon had.

The very hand he had been using to cover his coughs was completely red with blood. And it took him that moment, far too late, to realize that he wasn't suffering from a cold. That there was a reason the pile of bodies they had found days ago hadn't shown any signs of injury or physical trauma.

There were no rogue demons to stop from killing helpless humans. They didn't have to kill them. Because there was something in this forest that was doing it for them. Something that had infected Yusuke from the moment he had first stepped through the trees.

All at once, as if on cue with his realization, the world around him exploded. Everything became blurry, and the pain in his head was excruciating. He vaguely felt the blood dripping from his mouth as his body was racked with violent coughing.

The last thing he remembered was landing hard on his side against the solid earth and a familiar voice calling his name.


	5. Bleeding Flowers

_Disclaimer_: I don't get it. Why don't I own Yu Yu Hakusho yet? Can't Togashi see all of my hard work? -dramatically falls to the ground in tears-

Soooooo... here is chapter five. I should most definitely be either working on my Nanowrimo novel or my research paper on Alexander the Great due on the eighth. I am not doing either of those things right now. Whoops. I blame... Joss Whedon. Yes. It's his fault because he wrote such an amazing script for The Avengers, which made me want more of them so I found fanfiction of them, which inspired me in turn to work on my own fanfiction. Therefore, it only makes sense to blame Joss Whedon. Anyway, some things get explained in this chapter. Yay :D Also we get to see a glimpse of relationship fun times (though not necessarily Yusuke/Hiei just yet) and some rather cruel treatment of evil wooden creatures' body parts.

Thank you, as usual, to everyone who reads, reviews, favorites, and all that jazz! You guys make this story worth writing. Without your comments and favorites, I would think this was a waste of my time. I appreciate you guys more than I think you know, so thank you all. I'm glad everyone is liking the little mystery so far and I hope that everyone enjoys this chapter as well! :) Have fun reading, and as always, let me know what you think! :)

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><p><strong>Dancing by Firelight<strong>  
><em>chapter five<em>

"Shit!" The fire demon cursed out loud. He disappeared from one side of the clearing and reappeared in an instant by his fallen companion's side. Yusuke's eyes were half-open, but they were unseeing, and his coughing attack had already ceased, though the blood running from the edge of his mouth showed that whatever had happened was clearly still happening. He was just completely incapable of reacting to it at this point.

It was safe to say that Hiei had never had to deal with anything like this. He had been suspicious of his companion's illness, but he had trusted Yusuke to know the difference between some life-threatening Makai ailment and a trivial human cold. It would be the last time he ever trusted Yusuke with anything more than winning a fight.

The creatures hissed and wheezed as they laughed, and he glared up into the trees around him. There was suddenly more of them, far more than the small group that had appeared just to taunt them. He could hear the clattering of their wooden limbs as they brushed against each other, their discolored fangs, like knives, glistening as they grinned.

They had been taunting them because they had already known. They must have seen it happen to many of those humans on the outskirts of the forest. Perhaps they had even caused it, this illness now afflicting and killing the spirit detective lying before him. His grip tightened on the hilt of his sword, the blade that he had unconsciously drawn in response the events happening around him. But his sword was useless in a situation like this. His sword wouldn't be able to cut a sickness out of Yusuke. His sword wouldn't be able to deliver him some kind of antidote.

An antidote. Kurama. He had to bring Yusuke to Kurama immediately – if there was anyone who would know the cure to some unknown Makai illness, it would surely be the fox. Hiei didn't hesitate – he picked the larger man up and threw him rather forcefully over his shoulder. He could retrace his footsteps, he had found the path in and the same path would lead him out. If he moved quickly enough, he might be able to get the spirit detective to Kurama in time.

One hand holding Yusuke still over his shoulder and the other tightly gripping his sword, Hiei stepped forward to get moving – to get the hell out of his godforsaken forest to the outside world.

His path was blocked. Out of nowhere, hundreds or maybe even thousands of monstrous, grinning, laughing creatures fell upon him. He lashed out with his blade, easily carving into the creatures before him. He supposed that they felt he was less of a challenge now that Yusuke was out for the count and he was forced to carry him.

"Don't mess with me!" He shouted at them, cutting several more down to splinters. But when they fell, there was always more to take their place, and Hiei found himself unable to push forward against the sheer mass of the disgusting creatures. He was gaining no distance, and the ground at his feet was littered with splintered corpses.

He didn't have time for this. He didn't have time to deal with these bastards that chose now of all times to block his path. It is probably what they had been waiting for all along, and he had been too careless. He was loathe to admit it, even in secret to himself, but he too might be out of practice.

Yusuke's Shotgun attack would have been very useful at a time like this, but Hiei had to make due with just his one hand, still clutching his sword, still hacking away at the wooden monsters. Any fire technique that he used at this point would light up the forest like it was soaked in gasoline. While he was certain he would escape from the ensuing blaze, it was likely that Yusuke would not.

Hiei jumped, over the wide trunk of a long fallen tree. With the tree at his back, he promptly dropped Yusuke behind him and lashed out at more of the despicable creatures. He impaled one that had followed him over the top of the fallen tree trunk on his sword, and whipped his blade around with such force that the corpse flew from it and into the bodies of it's oncoming allies.

He glanced over his shoulder at the spirit detective's deathly still body. He looked absolutely helpless, and oddly innocent, in his sickened sleep. For a reason unknown to Hiei, the fire demon felt a surge of determination. He felt oddly protective of Yusuke, somehow stronger than that time he had died in front of them years ago. The feeling, he offhandedly thought to himself, was somewhat similar to what he felt when he looked upon Yukina.

The creatures were weak, but their sheer numbers were overwhelming. The number had to be quadrupled from the first time they had attacked them, closer to the edge of this godforsaken forest.

He wouldn't be able to use his Jagan's binding technique, not on all of them at once. Besides, he needed to concentrate fully in order to maintain it, and he couldn't do that while hauling his friend's unconscious body around on his shoulder.

"Shit!" He repeated. More monsters attacked him, more bodies fell and split into twigs and teeth. Behind him, he could just barely hear the sound of Yusuke's ragged breathing. At least he was still breathing, though the amount of time for that was steadily decreasing.

He didn't have time to think. His best chance at this point was to summon the black dragon. It wasn't likely that the spirit detective would survive the impending and inextinguishable flames, but it was Yusuke's best chance.

Hiei was only seconds away from setting the entire place on fire when the world around him suddenly crackled and turned to ice. He looked around with a glare set on his face as all of the creatures became completely encased in ice – even those that had been in midair, and they shattered into thousands of wood splinters and ice shards as they completed their falls.

"Hiei!" He heard his name shouted in a familiar voice, and he turned to see Kurama landing on his feet behind him. "We got here as fast as we could!" The fox exclaimed, though it was hard to hear him over the sounds of shattering icicles and the wooden bodies of the creatures as they snapped into pieces.

"What the hell are you doing here?" Hiei asked, barely audible amidst the chaos surrounding them on all sides.

"Never mind that just now!" Kurama shouted, and turned to Yusuke's unconscious form, lying gracelessly where Hiei had thrown him. Hiei watched, slashing into one of the wooden creatures that had broken through the onslaught of ice, as Kurama reached into his satchel and retrieved a vial of thick liquid that looked less than appetizing. "Help me," Kurama asked, though it was obviously more of a statement than anything else.

The fire demon stepped over to his companions and, at Kurama's command, propped Yusuke's head and torso up onto his lap. He glanced around them warily as the fox tipped the rather foul-smelling concoction into the spirit detective's mouth. Yusuke wretched almost immediately either at the taste of it or at the blood that had pooled inside of his cheeks. Kurama let him spit it out and made sure his mouth was empty before trying again. This time, Yusuke unconsciously fought against swallowing the liquid, but Hiei held him down with an arm across his collarbone and he eventually began to swallow it.

The fire demon's eyes darted around the area, making sure that no enemies were approaching them. The ice seemed to be doing it's job rather well, and there was a fraction of the monsters that had originally attacked them. Hiei scoffed to himself. What kind of an idiot sends a fire demon into a hostile forest? A baby who thought a spirit energy toting human would be useful.

Yusuke slowly relaxed in his grip as Kurama tucked the now empty vial away into his satchel, and Hiei looked down at Yusuke's face. He still looked as if he was in pain, but he was no longer leaking blood from the corner of his mouth. Hiei scowled in silence. In all of his years, surrounded by death, he had never once dealt with a horrible illness. He hated it. It was the one thing his sword and his flames were useless against. And Yusuke could have died because of it.

Reminding himself that it shouldn't matter whether or not a human died, even if said human was a halfbreed, was more difficult than it should have been.

His eyes snapped up after he realized that Kurama was staring at him, an unreadable expression on his face. He glared at the fox and quickly stood, removing Yusuke from his lap. He stepped away and looked around at the winter wonderland now surrounding them and heard the last shattering of ice before Touya landed silently on his feet before them.

His eyes were expressionless, but his voice was full of concern as he turned to Kurama and asked, "How is he doing? Did we reach him in time?"

"We'll have to wait and see," the fox said, wiping the blood from Yusuke's chin with a cloth he had retrieved from his bag. "He seems to have calmed down though."

"That is better than nothing," the ice demon said, before his icy blue eyes fell upon Hiei. The fire demon could see the subtle change of the air turning white from cold as he spoke. "What were those things?"

Hiei just shrugged, placing his sword back into his sheath. "They've been following us the whole time. They're not a threat."

"One may not be a threat. Ten may not be a threat. But hundreds of them coming at you at once can be," The ice demon said, as if trying to reprimand Hiei for his arrogance. As if saying, "They seemed to be overwhelming you."

Hiei was about to spit some insult out at Touya when Yusuke released a long and deep cough which erupted into another coughing fit. The fire demon cursed inwardly at himself for taking an involuntary step forward at the sound – an action that he knew would catch Kurama's watchful eye. He then wondered why he was relieved when there was no sign of further bleeding.

Yusuke's brown eyes opened when his coughing had dissipated, and he looked up at Kurama with a grin. "Hey," he said hoarsely. "Got you a present. Pretty flower. It's in my pack." At those words, Touya immediately and silently disappeared over the trunk of the tree in search of the backpack that was left where it lay.

The fox smiled down at him, humor dancing in his green eyes. "Why Yusuke, you shouldn't have. I'm flattered that you think of me that way, but I'm going to have to reject your feelings. I hope you don't mind."

Yusuke's subsequent laugh turned into another coughing fit, this one also free of blood. "No hard feelings. You can keep the flower though. It's messy. Bleeds everywhere."

"Oh, just what I wanted," Kurama said in playful sarcasm. Hiei would have scoffed and scowled at them had he not been so preoccupied in looking for any telltale sign of internal bleeding. The fox shot him a sidewards glance that told him nothing was escaping him. The fire demon could not, for the life of him, understand what was causing him to act so strange. Perhaps he was contracting something too. For some reason, he hoped for the latter because the former was just uselessly unexplainable.

The exhaustion and pain was clear in the spirit detective's face – Yusuke had never been one for masking his emotions – and the strained smile he wore just seemed to make the indescribable feeling even stronger within Hiei. Kurama had seen Yusuke's expression as well, and he reached into his red hair and removed a small seed from within it. Hiei still never understood how he kept them all in his hair and how he knew which seed was which. It bloomed, into a small red flower, in his hand as he brought it toward Yusuke. He held it before the spirit detective's lips and Yusuke breathed in the sweet aroma. He was instantly lulled into a deep slumber, a far more peaceful sleep than the one he had just woken from previously.

There was he soft sound of Touya's bare feet as he landed by Kurama's side, placing the pack on the ground next to him. The fox unzipped the pack and removed the large white flower Yusuke had plucked for him. It had begun to shrivel and wither by now, but it still let off the most sickeningly sweet of scents. Kurama turned it over in his hands and said, "I thought so."

Hiei couldn't stand around anymore. "What the hell is going on?" he asked, and the fox and the ice demon next to him exchanged glances. That was when Kurama noticed a freshly bleeding gash on Touya's upper arm, and his eyes widened as he gently but forcefully gripped the ice demon's smaller wrist and pulled him over to examine the wound.

And what a simple action like that could show. Hiei was no fool, and he could see all of the feelings momentarily flash across his friend's face. The fox was well practiced, unlike the spirit detective, in masking his emotions. But there were times when he was caught off guard and they slipped through. Now was one of those times. And Hiei knew why Kurama had seemed as if he had been hiding something from him for the past several months. He saw the worry in Kurama's eyes as he looked over the wound, the relief when he realized it was minor, and the love when he smiled at the ice demon beside him.

This just further frustrated and annoyed Hiei, and he asked again with renewed vigor, "What the hell is going on?"

Kurama sighed, likely realizing that he had been caught. He mustered up a smile and beckoned Hiei over, "I'll explain everything in a moment. Could you please start us a fire?"

As Hiei tossed a pile of branches from the splintered remains of the creatures and lit it up, Kurama gently tucked Yusuke's backpack beneath his head, watching for signs of changes in his breathing and sleeping. He then turned and sat cross legged facing the fire. Hiei stood on the other side of it, his hands shoved in the pockets of his jacket. The ice demon, not very fond of the warmth from the fire, sat silently perched upon the top of the fallen tree trunk.

Not one for small talk, Hiei got straight to the point. "All of those dead humans back there, Yusuke, and your mother. They all had the same illness, didn't they?"

The fox nodded, retrieving the withered white flower from the ground beside him, twirling it thoughtfully in his fingers. "Yes."

"And that illness, it came from the Makai," he continued, already drawing the conclusions but making sure they were correct.

Kurama nodded again. "Yes. They all fell ill from the same affliction – caused by the pollen found in this very flower." He held up the white blossom. "Once we realized what it was, I was able to create a treatment for it using Makai plants."

"And your mother?" Hiei asked bluntly, ignoring the "we" in that sentence. He would get to that later.

"She pulled through. I made it just in time," He answered, relief apparent in his voice. "Once I knew what it was, I knew that Yusuke would contract it as well."

"How did you know that?" The fire demon asked, standing still and looking at Kurama, and Yusuke's resting form, over the dancing flames of their makeshift campfire.

"Because humans aren't resistant to it," He began to explain, tossing the flower over into Hiei's hands. The fire demon looked it over thoroughly. It looked absolutely harmless, but it was apparently the cause of all of their problems. "You see, this plant was quite well lived many years ago. You would see them everywhere. Over time, most demons grew resistant to the toxin in it's pollen, and the illness was lost to history. The flower began to die out except for in the most wild of forests, just like this one. But the resistance is still there, given to us as a sort of inheritance."

"But humans have never been exposed to it," Hiei said.

"And therefore never built up a resistance to the toxin," Kurama finished for him.

The fire demon scowled. "So that's it then? That doesn't explain the piles of bodies we found in the forest. And how did the plants get to the human world, if they're so rare even here?"

"You're right," Kurama said, looking up at the ice demon sitting silently above them. "This investigation isn't over, not in the slightest. Because in order for this plant to infect humans, someone had to bring it over into the human world."

"A demon or an infected human," Touya suggested, calling down to them.

Hiei seriously doubted that a human just happened to accidentally slip through a gate, contract this disease, and then slip back through to the human world without noticing a thing. From what Kurama was saying, it wasn't a contagious illness. One had to actually inhale the pollen in order to contract the illness. And it still didn't explain why the dead humans were arranged into piles. "No, this was intentional." He was beginning to see why the original Reikai agent they had sent, the one that Hiei and Yusuke were supposed to have been looking for, had disappeared.

The fox seemed to have drawn the same conclusion as he had. "Like I said, this investigation is far from over."

The group was silent for a moment, with nothing but the sound of the flames crackling as they greedily ate at the former creatures that were now firewood. Hiei finally sat down on the ground, unable to keep a soft sigh from escaping him.

"How did you know what it was?" He asked Kurama, through the flames. "How did you know that this plant was causing the illness?"

The fox and the ice demon exchanged glances over the tree trunk, and Hiei scowled at them. He hadn't forgotten what he had seen, but the looks they gave each other right then was a firm reminder that it needed to be mentioned.

"...I snuck into the morgue," Kurama said after a moment. "After I had heard that there were similar cases to my mother's."

"And?" Hiei asked, impatient.

"...after the illness tortures you, mangling you on the inside..." Kurama sighed, likely because he couldn't think of a better way to phrase it. "Well, the pollen infests the body with seeds. After their host dies, they emerge through the body's orifices – the mouth, nose, ears – and they bloom. That is why they bleed – they live off of the blood of the one's they have infected."

Hiei couldn't keep himself from sighing in response. "Of course they do."


	6. Keeping Secrets

_Disclaimer_: There are many legitimate reasons as to why I should probably never own Yu Yu Hakusho.

Hello hello! We're back with another chapter! :D I've been pretty inspired to write, but I couldn't seem to concentrate on just one thing. Luckily, after opening about five of my half-started chapters or stories, I opened up the document with pieces of this chapter in it and managed to finish chapter six :D Hooray~ c: Something big happens in this one, and I know some of you are going to be like "Well, it's about time!" xD Also, I think I am using Hiei to channel the hidden pyromaniac in me.

Thank you, as always, to my readers! To everyone who reads, reviews, favorites, and everything else, you are what is moving this story forward. Without your feedback and encouragement, this would probably just sit unfinished on my hard drive. I really appreciate all of you, and I'm going to start responding to signed reviews as I can. I never thought that this story would get to this point, that it was something I'd give up on halfway through. But you guys are keeping it alive :) Thank you again! :D I hope you enjoy this latest chapter, and let me know what you think of it! :) I'll see you guys again in chapter seven~

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><p><strong>Dancing by Firelight<strong>  
><em>chapter six<br>_

Kurama had not entered the forest unprepared, though Hiei would have expected this of him and not Yusuke. The fox always thought several steps ahead – and since he and Yusuke had already been in the forest for several days, he must have assumed that he would be too.

Somehow, Hiei wasn't surprised at all at this recent turn of events. Even though their jobs were usually more straightforward than this one, they were never exactly simple either. It didn't surprise him that someone was smuggling toxin-spreading plants into the human world to kill them off. Hell, it might have been him doing it had his circumstances been different. If he hadn't been defeated by Yusuke years ago. If he hadn't been placed on parole and forced to fight side by side with him. If he hadn't started to feel differently, to some extent, about his hatred for humans.

"Did you see the piles of bodies?" He asked Kurama after a long moment of silence.

"Yes, we did," the fox answered, "I'm assuming the flowers hadn't sprouted yet?"

"Not that I had seen," the fire demon responded back, "Though I didn't moved the fresh bodies to look at the older ones."

"It wouldn't have mattered if you had," Touya said, from atop the large fallen tree. "The flowers had already been harvested from the older ones."

"So someone is waiting for them to grow and then removing them?" Hiei asked, a scowl firmly set in his features. If that was the case, all they needed to do was find the one doing so and apprehend or kill them. Either way was fine with the fire demon. Though honestly, he was more in the mood for killing as of right now. He cast a sideward glance toward Yusuke's sleeping form – he could still see the smallest amount of dried blood in the corners of his lips. The sight seemed to fuel the rage he kept hidden inside of himself. Yes, he was definitely in the mood to kill.

The glance had been subtle, but Kurama had noticed it anyway. He said nothing about it though, and instead chose to answer Hiei's question. "It seems so," Kurama answered. "And they're likely moving them to the human world."

All right, so then they would need to find the perpetrator, apprehend or kill them, and then destroy any flowers in the human world. That last part could be left to Kurama – Hiei would gladly take the second though.

"How is Yusuke?" Touya asked suddenly, now that most of their detective conversation and conclusions were finished. The fox turned to look the spirit detective over in response, and looked at the fire and ice demons before saying, "He looks like he's getting better. I think he'll be fine."

"That's good news. Jin will be glad to know that Yusuke is well once we return," Touya remarked.

There was a long and awkward silence before the fox glanced up the thick tree trunk at the ice demon perched upon it. Touya never caught his gaze, but he stood and said, "I'm going to take a look around." He disappeared over the other side of the fallen tree. There was a short moment where neither of them spoke, but Hiei was too impatient to wait for a break in the silence.

"Why didn't you tell me?" The fire demon inquired, his annoyance ever apparent in his tone.

Kurama laughed at his words, humor in his eyes, "As if you've never kept secrets."

He was right about that, but he chose not to admit to it out loud. Or at all. "That's different and you know it," Hiei said, knowing exactly which secret Kurama was referring to. One of the few that he knew about.

"Maybe if you just told Yukina already, I'd be more inclined to tell you my secrets," Kurama laughed again, but they both knew it would not have changed a thing. He was just looking for a way to deflect the topic. With both of their long and violent histories, they each had more secrets than they had time to tell them.

Hiei scoffed at him, his anger apparent in his crimson eyes. It was one of the things Hiei could never quite keep hidden – when he was angry. He was able to hide his past from the people around him, and he was able to hide his true relation to his sister from her. But he was never truly able to hide when he was in a situation that caused him to become angry.

"Are you going to give me an answer? Or are you going to keep trying to play games?" Hiei spit out, crossing his arms in front of him. If Kurama was waiting for the fire demon to get frustrated with him and disappear in a flash of black, as he was sometimes prone to do especially when the topic came to his sister, he would be waiting for a long time.

"I don't know why you're so angry about this," Kurama said honestly, looking him over with emerald eyes, as if trying to read him. The fact that Hiei himself didn't quite know why he was so angry either only frustrated him further. Those eyes seemed, as they were always intent on doing, to pierce right through him. "Unless you're using this as an excuse to vent anger that should be directed elsewhere. You just don't know where, do you?"

"You know what? You're right," Hiei said, standing again, infuriated and about to disappear into the trees as he had resolved not to do only moments before. "It's none of my business." He glanced over at Yusuke's slumbering form involuntarily, and somehow the sight of him seemed to magnify his anger at Kurama. He wouldn't be able to explain why even if he tried.

The fox sighed and leaned backward slightly, putting his weight into the hands he had placed on the forest floor behind him. "I didn't intend on keeping it a secret from you, Hiei," he spoke to Hiei's back. The fire demon halted in his step and silently faced the trees.

"Touya and I have been in a relationship of sorts for around two and a half years," Kurama continued. Hiei stood still, his hands shoved in his pockets. It would have been around the time when everyone was training before the tournament in the Makai then. Hiei silently recalled that the fox had gathered some of their previous opponents as allies in order for all of them to get stronger. It seemed that Kurama and Touya were doing things other than just training during that time. "It was... unexpected. Even now, I'm not quite sure how to describe it. I just know that I have strong feelings for him."

It was odd to hear that Kurama couldn't describe something. He was normally so eloquent, but it seemed that even he could be at a loss for words. "And how does your human mother feel about this?" Hiei said curtly. If he remembered correctly, humans were generally opposed to relationships where those involved were of the same gender.

"She doesn't know either," Kurama explained. The fire demon couldn't see him as he turned the white blossom over in his hands. "I was going to sit her down over dinner and explain, but then she fell ill."

Hiei wondered if Kurama had planned on sitting him down and explaining it to him before this whole mess of an investigation happened. Though honestly, once Shiori had contracted her Makai-based disease, it was probably the furthest thing from his mind. For someone who had spent so many years being as demon as demons can be, Kurama was incredibly human.

The anger seemed to dissipate, and oddly enough, curiosity seemed to take over. "...so how did it happen?" He asked, still keeping his back to his friend while glancing over his shoulder. He'd be damned if he was going to let Kurama read everything in his expression.

"Do you want to know every dirty little detail?" Kurama teased, mischief dancing in his eyes. Hiei snorted in response – he would still always be a fox, to some extent. But Kurama continued seriously, a small smile on his lips. "Back in that first battle between the two of us, he spoke of his search for his 'light.' When we were training together, he told me that he had eventually found it somewhere unexpected. In me."

Hiei rolled his eyes. They were just foolish and sentimental words. And now, Kurama had a weakness. Much like he had Yukina that his enemies could use against him, the fox now had an ice demon as his weakness. This was one of many reasons that Hiei would never tell his sister the truth – to protect her. Maybe it was one of the reasons Kurama hadn't mentioned anything either.

As if he could read his mind – Kurama just knew him too well – the fox said, "I know exactly what you're thinking. That this makes me weak." Hiei finally turned around, and he saw resilience and determination in those emerald eyes. "And honestly, I couldn't begin to describe to you how very wrong that assumption is until you've experienced it yourself."

The fire demon scoffed at this statement. "You'll be waiting a long time to explain that one, then."

The fox smiled at him, his eyes filled once more with that mischief Hiei had become so accustomed to seeing. But that gaze went right through him, held by the eyes of someone who knew something that he didn't. "Oh, I don't know about that. I'm not the only one here keeping secrets, am I?"

Before Hiei had time to answer that sudden question, or even think about it at all, Touya landed softly on the ground between them. The air around them was instantly chillier. "Sorry to interrupt," he said, his eyes glancing up to the trees, "but they're back."

The fire demon heard the familiar and increasingly more annoying sound of creaking wood and the hushed laughter of those creatures in the trees once more. And he really wasn't in the mood for them. He instantly unsheathed his sword and instinctually placed himself in a fighting stance in front of the unconscious Yusuke. He didn't have time to think of this involuntary action as the chattering above them increased, and white began drifting down from above them. It looked like snow from afar, but as the objects lightly rode the air to the ground, the demons and the fox could see that they were actually white petals – the sickeningly sweet scented petals of the same flowers that had caused all of their problems.

Hiei caught one of them in the palm of his hand. He glared up at creatures in the trees before the petal in his hand burst into flames. He curled his fingers around it, and every other petal caught fire. They were nothing but ash when they reached the forest floor. He was really getting pissed off. "Come down here so I can kill you!" He shouted up at them, finally able to release some of his anger at what he thought to be the right outlet.

"You are the ones who will perish," the voices whispered and hissed and cackled together, just short of being in unison. "You are the ones who will never leave this forest alive. You will become the soil, and your blood will feed the trees."

Hiei looked over at Kurama. "I'm going to burn this forest to the ground," he stated, his anger fueling the flames as they consumed the falling petals. He felt the familiar itch of the tattoo on his arm, the overwhelming urge to release the power of the black dragon and rain destruction down upon the entire area. There would be no need for further investigation when there was nothing to investigate.

The fox held a hand out in front of his chest. "Wait. You'll burn us along with it."

"You're smart, you'll figure something out," Hiei said, and knew that the assumption was probably true, but he forced himself to swallow some of his anger anyway. The itch beneath his bandaged arm dulled to a light throb. The dragon was calmed. For now.

Kurama looked up at the mass of wooden monsters above them, glancing sideward at Touya for a split second before addressing them. "What are you?" He shouted up at the creatures.

"We are the forest. We are individuals, but we are one. We are life, and we are death," They answered, still dropping the flower petals despite the fact that Hiei didn't allow even one of them to touch the ground intact. Every single petal became a short-lived flame that was dead before it could reach the ground.

"Why do you want us dead?" Kurama asked, though Hiei didn't expect them to give a straight answer. All they ever did was laugh from the safety of the treetops.

"All who trespass will die," they said, and that same hissed and cackling laughter erupted deafeningly around them. The fox continued in his attempts to get a real answer from them, but they either ignored him or couldn't hear him over their own voices.

Touya opened his palm, unveiling a fistful of ice shards, and with a breath sent them flying through one of the creatures. Even as it fell and it's body splintered into a thousands pieces as it hit the ground, the monsters above them did not cease in their laughing, nor did they stop showering them with petals. Touya ran and jumped up, flitting between two trees in an expert climb toward the canopy. Hiei could hear the sound of ice cracking and wood splintering, and soon the white falling down was indeed snow this time. The fire demon, in spite of all of his rage, kept his feet firmly planted where they were, gripping the hilt of his sword far more tightly than he needed to.

As the creatures began to flee, Touya disappeared into the trees after them. Kurama reached into his hair and pulled out a seed, which quickly grew into his familiar thorned whip. The fox glanced between Hiei and Yusuke for a moment before he said, "We're going to try to follow them. Maybe they'll lead us to answers. I trust you'll watch over Yusuke for a bit?"

Before Hiei could answer with what would have likely been a snide remark on how he wasn't on parole anymore and the fox couldn't tell him what to do, Kurama took off into the woods after the ice demon and the mass of retreating monsters. And the fire demon was left standing with his sword in hand, surrounded by the light layer of snow and splinters of wood that had been littered across the forest floor.

He stood there, unmoving, for several minutes. He glanced around the trees, but there was no more sign of those irritating creatures in the canopy above. Hiei replaced his sword back inside of it's sheath before turning around, unable to contain a frustrated sigh. He looked down at Yusuke's resting form with a glare set in his features.

"Guess I'm on babysitting duty," he said quietly, more to himself than anyone or anything else. He saw, in the dwindling light from the fire, that his resting companion had been covered in a layer of snow as well. Hiei groaned – he would never hear the end of it if Kurama came back and Yusuke was covered in snow. He glanced at the fire and it roared back to life, increasing the heat around them almost immediately. The fire demon knelt down and patted the layer of snow from Yusuke's clothing, annoyed that he had to be doing it at all.

Hiei stood straight up and looked around him once more, but the forest was as still and as silent as it had always been. As long as those creatures weren't around, the forest was deathly still. There wasn't even a breeze to rustle the leaves of the trees surrounding them. There were no signs of any kind of life other than Yusuke and himself. The fire demon sighed and sat beside his unconscious companion. The forest was so quiet that he could hear the soft rhythm of Yusuke's breath as he inhaled and exhaled, his chest rising and falling with the periodic expanding and retracting of his lungs. Hiei watched for any sign that he was still suffering, that he was in any kind of pain – the fire demon didn't want to be surprised again – before he brushed the already melting snowflakes from his friend's hair. His hand lingered above the slightly dampened loose strands of black, and his eyes fell upon those lips, dried blood still in the corners.

And it was in that moment, with his fingers running through dark-hued locks of hair and with the shadows from the firelight dancing across Yusuke's sleeping face, that Hiei realized what Kurama had been talking about – what Hiei had really been so frustrated, so perplexed, about. And it explained a lot of things – why Hiei had begun to see humans differently. Why he had become so involved in the affairs of humans. Why he had interfered in Yusuke's battle with Sniper a few years ago. Why he had become enraged out of his mind when he watched Yusuke die by Sensui's hand. Why he had been so quick to go along with Yusuke's insane plan that a tournament be held to determine the ruler of the Makai. Why he had been so eager to go on this very investigation. Why he got so angry seeing Yusuke in his current state. Why he had been changed in every way he possibly could have, in all the ways he never thought he could be.

It was all Yusuke. It had always been Yusuke.


End file.
